The name of that new guy who won all the swimming gold at the Rio Olympics eludes me at the moment so I’ll compare myself to the great Mark Spitz of Munich fame. Let’s just say I’ve got a way to go. There is a decent sized swimming pool at the Crossroads RV Park in Tucson where we’re staying and with the 90-degree weather Mary and I have been swimming every day for a week. We’re up to 40 laps now but I’m spaghetti-armed for the last few laps. The weather is forecasted to stay hot for a few more days before it cools down. We may make it to 50 laps before it all ends.

Even with the warm weather, the water takes some getting used to. It generally takes us five minutes to slowly and painfully adjust to the cold water. I know it’s better to just jump in and get it all over with but I somehow just can’t.

Keen student of human behavior that I am, I have become aware of a primitive instinct erupting to the surface of my psyche of late. The annual NCAA basketball tournament, the so-called March Madness, is underway as I write. I generally pay about as much attention to basketball as I do to the latest trends in wedding gowns (none), but the University of Arizona is in the competition this year and I find myself giving a damn about their prospects. Why? Good question. My affiliation with UofA amounts to no more than that I meet with my German tutors on the campus several times a week. But sitting as we do at an outdoor table in the shadow of the enormous Wildcat football stadium, I have absorbed a modicum of school spirit. Such a strange thing allegiance is. After all, if the Wildcats do well, it is no reflection on me. I have contributed nothing to their success or failure. And yet, how easily we humans attach ourselves to groups, teams, nations of all kinds. Even a rationalist like myself is susceptible. Instincts – don’t understimate them.

I have not lived in Columbus, Ohio since 1962 but still am a died in the wool fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes. I can never pass someone with an OSU emblem without saying “GO BUCKS”.
The reply is always a thumbs up or a high 5. We humans are strange creatures after all.